Mexico’s rights agency says police executed 22 at ranch

The government said the dead were drug cartel suspects hiding on a ranch in Tanhuato, near the border with Jalisco state.

Some 22 suspected gang members were “arbitrarily executed” in a confrontation with police in western Mexico a year ago, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says, in the latest incident of rights abuses by security forces.

Mr Gonzalez Perez said: “The investigation confirmed facts that show grave human rights violations attributable to public servants of the federal police”. The report states that among the 43 individuals killed during the drug-bust, including one police officer, 22 civilians died as a result of “arbitrary execution”, and an additional four were killed from “excessive use of force”.

The commission also threw doubt on the government’s explanation of what led to the clash in the first place.

Although the death toll in the attack exceeded the global kill rate, it was not unusual for Mexico that has witnessed more than 100,000 killings as part of the drug war that began in 2006.

Raul Gonzalez (R) and a member of CNDH Jesus Ramires Lopez attend a news conference in Mexico City, Mexico August 18, 2016 about an investigation into an incident where at least 42 suspected gang members were killed in a federal police raid in Tanhuato.

The commission established that 40 people were shot, one died in a fire and another was run over.

The CNDH report suggests that police raided the ranch early in the morning – when numerous suspected cartel members were sleeping – with conflicting evidence as to how the victims were killed.

The report represents an important blow to President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has struggled to convince the public and the global community that his government is willing to take human rights abuses seriously.

Previously, the government said there had been no human rights violations during the raid on the ranch.

Mexico’s federal police, the army and the navy have always been implicated in abuses since a drug war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives began in 2006. The commission reports that it couldn’t reach any definitive conclusions about how 15 others were killed.

National Commissioner of Security Renato Sales denied that the federal police committed arbitrary executions during the operation, carried out in May 2015. “They acted in legitimate defence”, Sales reportedly told a news conference. But The Associated Press found evidence at the scene did not match that account.

In that case, three women who survived were tortured by agents of the state prosecutor’s office to corroborate the army’s version. Police threatened their lives and the lives of their families, it said.

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